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Comment by timeon | Hacker News Reader

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timeon·

> Literally nothing about autonomous vehicles stops cities from improving public transit.

What do you mean by 'literally' here? Seems like these ride-sharing companies do have impact on public transit.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-24/do-uber-a...

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/07/25/uber-and-lyft-are-ove...

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Public transit in almost every US city is terrible. It isn't hard to see why someone with means would rather call an Uber than wait 15 minutes for the next bus to show up. Public transit can certainly be improved while Uber exists, just look towards many major international cities for examples.

Neither Uber nor Lyft is "a bunch of sensors stuffed into a single car", to quote the comment I was replying to. But even counting them, public transit seems to be doing fine in Europe, Asia, and NYC despite the existence of ride-share services. Ride sharing services don't impose additional right of way constraints either because they're just private vehicles.

I guess I just don't understand why you'd say they prevent cities from improving public transit.

if the amount of human and financial capital invested in ridesharing and autonomous vehicles was instead invested in mass transit in the US, nyc wouldn't be the only city in the nation where not owning a car is a (legitimate, long term) option without sacrifices

I seriously doubt that. The amount of money that has been invested in autonomous driving is low tens of billions. It's the same order of magnitude as the cost of extending BART to SJ.

That's a good project, but it's just one. It would take vastly more money to actually make public transit great in the US, especially in many cities at once. I think the amount that has been privately invested in self-driving cars seems small in comparison.

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